That isn’t a shot of a pleisasaur breaching, and, it is a clever hoax at the beginning, however, you can see, at the end of the breaching action, the tail of the well known organism that the pleisasaur was edited onto… an Orca.

This kind of goes back to what was being discussed on another thread and that is the possible future problem of CGI used to hoax footage. Sure, it seems that this is some sort of viral marketing campaign by the filmmakers, but imagine when CGI gets cheap and easy enough to catch on like photoshop.

Imagine if a better done clip than this was done by some anonymous hoaxers not relating it to any movie, who had been studying up on what us cryptos pick out as fake in these videos. I foresee the use of increasingly sophisticated computer visual effects causing a big headache when trying to analyze supposed cryptid footage. The technology to pull of very realistic looking footage may only be available to big studios now, but this sort of thing invariably gets cheaper and more accessible. I think even now someone could possibly pull off a compelling shot if it was somewhat kept in the shadows, obscure enough to not have people thinking it’s a fake right off the bat.

Of course, nowadays people pick off photoshopped stuff fairly quickly, but that was not always the case. I’m curious to see the extent of computer trickery in any possible future hoaxes.

Surely no one actually considered that this could be real? It was obviously done with tongue firmly in cheek. The idea of nessie leaping out of the water like a great white snatching a seal… pretty neat stuff though…

Being a fan of Animal Planet, Discovery, et al, the film sequence is nothing more than a great white shark, with a seal (in its final moments of life), securely locked in the shark’s jaws. Rocketing up from the depths to “hit” unwary seals swimming at or near the surface is a typical great white tactic. I might even venture a guess as to where the footage was taken: off the coast of South Africa or in proximity to the Faralone Islands off of San Francisco Bay, California. And, yes, orcas use a similar tactic to nab seals.

It seems that this is a viral promotional video for The Water Horse, as I wrote in eSkeptic. As posters above have pointed out, the fact that the clip actually includes a url for the film really says it all. Further, the creature design for the leaping plesiosaur is the same as the creature design for the movie, including the distinctive whale-like tail.

(I also contacted Weta Digital, the New Zealand special effects vendor responsible for the film’s creature FX, to ask if their team made the leaping clip. They passed my query on to their client, Sony Pictures, who coyly responded, “We have no comment about the clip you indicated below at this time.” I read that as, “Yes, it’s a viral ad.”)